James Franklin on The Hot Seat: 3 Candidates Penn State Should Consider, One They Should Run From
At the start of the 2025 season, Penn State Football head coach James Franklin was flying high with the No. 2 team in the nation, his hand-picked “superstar” staff, and all the “alignment” in the athletic department he begged for years for.
Now, just five games into the 2025 campaign, the wheels have come off for Franklin’s squad and it seems the only way forward is a messy divorce.
Coming off of a devastating whiteout loss to Oregon, Franklin suffered the most embarrassing loss of his Penn State tenure Saturday, losing to 0-4 UCLA (who had never even held a lead this season) 42-37. While there are 56 million reasons ($) why Penn State may not make a coaching change, Pat Kraft and Penn State need to make one if they are serious about being a winning program competing for championships moving forward.
If Kraft and Penn State were to look for a replacement for Franklin, here are five great potential replacement candidates (and one coach who should absolutely not be considered).
Penn State’s Best, and Worst Case Candidates to Replace James Franklin
Best case scenarios:
Manny Diaz, Duke Head Coach
Under two years removed from Manny Diaz leading the best defense in the nation in Happy Valley, Diaz would be an ideal replacement for James Franklin.
Already familiar with the area and recruiting at Penn State, Diaz is an aggressive defensive minded head coach with experience. In his second season at Duke, Diaz is 4-2, following a 9-win campaign in his first season.
Diaz has been a great recruiter over his head coaching tenure, scoring multiple highly ranked classes during his tenure at Miami (even being named the best head coach recruiter in Florida by 247Sports) and landing two of Duke’s top six all-time recruits in his first recruiting class at Duke.
With the better resources and a more prestigious program at Penn State, Diaz could take his recruiting prowess to another level and secure plenty of talent in Happy Valley. Penn State’s “alignment” would also give Diaz plenty of resources to find a great offensive mind to run the Penn State offense.
While Diaz’s salary at Duke is not publicly available, Penn State and Pat Kraft should have more than enough resources to pry Diaz away from Duke if they want.
Curt Cignetti, Indiana Head Coach
Indiana’s Curt Cignetti burst onto the scene in 2024 with his first power four head coaching job at lowly Indiana (who holds the record for the most losses in college football history).
However, after just one season at the helm, Cignetti took a perennial loser and turned the Hoosiers into a college football playoff team, and earned the honors of being the 2024 national coach of the year.
In 2025, Cignetti has once again lead the Hoosiers to a top 10 ranking five games into the season.
Cignetti’s age is certainly a concern. At 64 years old, how many years does Cignetti have left in the coaching world before he wants to retire, but the production over the past two years has certainly turned heads around the college football world and would warrant looking into.
Wild Cards
Jim Knowles, Penn State Defensive Coordinator
This one is interesting, especially after Knowles defense gave up 42 points to UCLA Saturday.
However, Knowles has a history of high performing defenses and has a national championship on his resume from his time at Ohio State. This offseason, Penn State made Knowles the highest-paid defensive coordinator in college football, at an astounding $3.1 million per year.
After the defensive performance against UCLA, fans would probably hate a potential Knowles hire, but he is worth adding to this list as a wild card candidate.
Knowles has five years of head coaching experience at Cornell, but has yet to lead a power four program. Penn State would probably not risk hiring an unproven head coach if they were to fire James Franklin.
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Bobby Engram, Washington Commanders Wide Receivers Coach
Bobby Engram is an up and coming coach and a former Penn State letterman under former coach Joe Paterno.
Engram has mainly coached in the NFL during his 14 year coaching career, however he did have a stint as Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2022. Like Knowles, Penn State would probably shy away from Engram because of his lack of head coaching experience.
Ricky Rahne, Old Dominion Head Coach
Former Penn State offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne was essentially rushed out of Happy Valley to any head coaching job he could find after the 2018 and 2019 seasons (every Penn State fan remembers his infamous 4th and five call…).
However, as the head coach at Old Dominion, Rahne has been punching above his weight and earns at least consideration on this list. Rahne took over a Monarchs program that went 1-11 in 2019 and made a bowl game in his first season.
Rahne also essentially ended former Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry’s tenure at Virginia Tech earlier this year, dominating the Hokies at Virginia Tech 45-26.
Rahne doesn’t have power four experience as a head coach and his overall record is not the best at Old Dominion so he would probably be towards the bottom of the list of potential candidates but at least merits consideration.
1 Name Penn State Should Not Consider
Matt Rhule, Nebraska Head Coach
If Penn State and Pat Kraft do terminate James Franklin, one name that Kraft should absolutely not consider is Nebraska’s Matt Rhule.
Yes, Matt Rhule is another letterman from the Paterno era and has built a few programs (Temple, Baylor) from the bottom into winners.
However, Rhule comes with the same issues that James Franklin has, he can’t win the big games. Rhule owns a career record 2-23 against ranked opponents, and has not won against a ranked opponent since his tenure at Temple. At Baylor, Rhule posted an 0-11 record against ranked opponents.
Rhule’s failure to win the big games has continued at Nebraska, where he is 0-7 against ranked opponents. It makes no sense for Penn State to pay $56 million to fire James Franklin only to bring in another coach that has Franklin’s same fatal flaws.
It remains to be seen whether Kraft and Penn State will swallow the tough pill to finally let go of James Franklin. It should be clear that Franklin has reached his ceiling with the Nittany Lions. Franklin did a ton to build Penn State back up from the sanctions era to what the Nittany Lions are today, but Franklin is “the guy before the guy.”
Georgia fired Mark Richt and finally broke through the top with Kirby Smart. Penn State must now do that to find their guy that can finally take the Nittany Lions back to the mountain top.
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